Nightmare
by Elizabeth Jay
Summary: Title taken from Episode 1.14 of Eric Kripke's "Supernatural." Fresh starts are rare, and Tim Drake has done everything within his power to protect Damian's. Unfortunately, vigilantes are never fully out of the business. Villains get attached.
1. Chapter 1

The boy who answered the door was fourteen. While tall for his age, he was thin—obviously caught mid-growth spurt. "Hello," he offered, his voice a touch flat. His hands twitched at his sides, but his blue eyes were open and curious. No sign of recognition.

Bruce Wayne forced a smile. "Hello." He brought his hands up to sign as he spoke. "Is your guardian home?"

The teen raised one hand, flexing his wrist up and down. "Yes. Do you work with Tim?" He abbreviated Tim's name with a simple 'T' rather than spell it or provide a name sign.

"I once did," Bruce acknowledged. That seemed to be enough for Damian who leaned back into the house and called for his brother.

"Mr. Wayne," Tim greeted him coolly, waving Damian off. The younger boy rolled his eyes dramatically as he went, presumably to finish his breakfast as Tim requested through sign. "It's been a long time."

"You're doing well, Tim. Damian looks much better."

"Well, the last time you laid eyes on him, he was eleven and in Intensive Care," Tim returned sharply. "Anything would be an improvement."

Bruce deserved that; he did. But . . . "I didn't come here to fight."

"Of course not," Tim agreed, shifting his weight. "You only fight for the important things."

Bruce shoved his foot between the door and frame to keep Tim from shutting him out. "This isn't about me. It's about Damian … and the Joker."

The gambit was enough. Tim immediately followed Bruce outside, closing the door firmly behind him.

"How bad is it?" the younger man hissed. He was only twenty-one, Bruce realized painfully.

"Ra's is involved," he admitted. That was a pretty telling sign of exactly how bad the situation had gotten. This wasn't supposed to happen. There were safeguards in place and with the death of Talia—well, Ra's had sworn off Gotham for a time.

"Does he know who Damian is? Where we live?" Young men in their twenties shouldn't be concerned with these things. "Can Damian even go to school?"

"No," Bruce answered the last, the most pressing and immediate question. That was why he came now, rather than paying a visit to Drake Industries later.

Tim crossed his arms. "What. Happened."

"The Joker is dead," Bruce explained. "That will hit the news tonight if the Gotham PD can keep it contained long enough to verify the Joker's identity."

The loss of the Joker is staggering. Tim struggled for a second before persevering. "And Ra's al Ghul decided to avenge his forgotten, ruined, little grandson now out of the goodness of his heart?" he asked skeptically. The former-Robin had always been good at putting together clues from the tiniest details, although Bruce wouldn't put it past his son—_adopted_, _emancipated_, _estranged_ . . . but still _his_—to keep a finger on Gotham's villain and vigilante community. "I like Ra's—sort of—and I still can't see it."

"Ulterior motives," Bruce agreed with a grimace. "His vessel is deteriorating, so he sent the Red Hood."

Tim nodded slowly, absorbing the information that Bruce can't say out in the open of this quiet little suburban neighborhood. His response was so soft that Bruce had to strain to hear it. "You're harboring a murderer, Bruce."

He knew that. Jason needed to pay for what he had done to the Joker, and Bruce would see justice done. He just couldn't afford to reject the Red Hood, his only source of information, and put the darker vigilante back on the street to reconsider Ra's two-for-one deal. "He came to me. He warned us for Damian's sake."

"Of course he did," Tim scoffed, turning away to regard the house blankly. "You said this wouldn't happen. Jason was _reforming_, you said. Ra's wasn't interested, you said. You spent over a million dollars improving Arkham's security to keep the Joker in check." Tim turned back to Bruce. "And yet, here you are on our doorstep."

"This isn't easy for any of us, Tim."

"No," Tim cut him off sharply. "You do not get to play that card, Bruce. You do not get to judge what is easy and what is hard. Not here. Not on my damn property, and never—_ever_—in regards to Damian."

"Tim—"

"His brain was stir-fried," Tim hissed. "He had to relearn speech and fine motor skills and a whole host of other things that were simply deleted from his brain. He's overcoming an aphasia that he can't even hear." Tim straightened, swallowing convulsively. "So you don't get to come in here, change everything, and decide what is and isn't manageable based on your perception of easy."

Bruce stayed quiet until Tim finished, and the man actually realized that he was signing as he spoke. Habit, Bruce supposed. He knew from surveillance that Tim occasionally signed in erratic bursts at work as well.

Tim folded his arms against his chest again to still his hands. "This is not okay," he enunciated clearly, clenching his fists in the sweater he was wearing. "I am very angry, but we will discuss that after the situation has been handled. What is your plan, Bruce?"

"I want you both back at the manor. The security is tighter, and more of us will be readily available should something occur."

"Jason is there," Tim stated calmly.

"Dick and Stephanie as well," Bruce responded just as levelly. "Barbara will be on call as always, Cass is on her way home, and Carrie is at the Manor more often than not."

Tim snorted at the mention of the newest Robin, but didn't comment. He let his arms drop, and for the first time all morning, Tim looked his age. "Alfred?"

Bruce smiled. "Never left."

There might have been a moment there. Some fragment of the bond Batman and Robin once had would have prevailed when it came to the beloved butler.

But the front door opened and the screen door gave a screech as Damian stuck his head out.

Tim and Bruce swiveled simultaneously.

"Going to be late," the teen announced. "Your fault."

Tim rolled his eyes at the simple declaration. "No school today." Tim was speaking purely for Bruce's benefit here, his hands holding a faster conversation with the younger boy. "I'll call in to excuse you."

Damian scowled. "Still your fault," he argued, signing for emphasis, pushing his flat hand away from his body forcefully. He didn't slam the door behind him when he retreated inside, but there was an audible thump as a backpack full of textbooks hit the floor.

"Damian and his teacher have differing definitions of punctual," Tim explained absently. "Believe it or not, the little demon thinks the world waits on him." That sounded almost fond, and Bruce didn't comment on the inappropriate nickname. "And if he's called on it, Damian prefers to blame me."

Tim sighed, carding a hand roughly through his hair. "We're going to need a few minutes; why don't you go get some coffee or something, Bruce?"

Bruce snorted. "Good try, Tim," he acknowledged ruefully. "No, I'll take my chances with Damian rather than risk you taking off as soon as I'm out of sight."

Tim smirked, but it was a tired expression. "Go-bag in every room, and viable identification in every vehicle."

"You were the only one to pay the proper attention to escape plans," Bruce shrugged. "I'd be disappointed if you hadn't put them to use." He hesitated. "We don't have to tell him everything. He doesn't need to know that I'm his father."

Tim looked skeptical.

"You've done well with him," Bruce shrugged. "I don't want to interfere . . . at least not any more than necessary," he finished ruefully, considering that he was uprooting the pair from the life that Tim had so carefully carved out for them.

Tim tilted his head to the side—an expression that was so Damian before—and then huffed out a quiet little laugh. "We don't talk about what Damian does and doesn't remember. It's just not," Tim waved his hand, but not even sign could convey his meaning, "not smart . . ." Tim decided on. "And you might be surprised."

* * *

Bruce did consent to wait in the kitchen while Tim trailed Damian to his room, picking up after the younger boy as he went—backpack, hoodie, left shoe, right shoe, house keys hung on the doorknob of Damian's bedroom. Proverbial breadcrumbs. The teen, himself, was sitting on his bed cross-legged with the schematics to a 1976 Triumph Spitfire spread out over his lap.

"Today is a library day," Damian informed him without looking up. That was deliberate—a way to exclude Tim's opinion or rebuttal from the conversation that Damian wanted to have. "Phelps is holding the last Rowling text for me."

Tim crossed the room, and snapped his fingers under Damian's chin. It was rude, but Damian had started it. They both broke such rules with great frequency; they were brothers after all. Having gained Damian's reluctant and annoyed attention, Tim signed and spoke simultaneously: "You don't even like _Harry Potter_ anymore."

Damian reddened, "But he will not let me have Tolkien until the mockery is at an end."

"Finish what you start," Tim parroted the librarian automatically, ignoring Damian's sentence structure or word choice. He didn't press the perseverance issue either. Normally, he agreed with Mr. Phelps, but today, he needed Damian's cooperation. Thus, Tim had rapidly calculated a bribe. "The whole Tolkien collection is in the Wayne Manor library."

Damian's eyes narrowed. "Why would I be in their library?"

Tim took a seat across from Damian. "I know I said that I wouldn't," Tim began reluctantly, "but I have to ask if . . ."

Damian went from looking suspicious to looking hunted in mere moments. There were reasons why they didn't discuss Damian's fleeting memories from before. Things had changed, and new starts were hard to come by. Tim had most emphatically instructed the therapist that memory recovery was completely up to Damian, and the teen worked on it in occasional bursts with her when the mood took him. Damian never shared anything that he managed to recall with Tim. At home, however, they were Tim and Damian as they had been throughout the hospital ordeal and ensuing rehabilitation. If Damian recalled anything prior to that, the teen didn't seem willing to risk their current relationship on fragments of an angrier Tim.

Tim shook his head to clear his thoughts. "I have to ask if you remember . . . bats?" he finished lamely.

Damian raised an eyebrow in an elegant gesture reminiscent of Talia. "Bats?" he asked, crossing his arms at the wrist and flexing his index fingers. "Or . . . the Bat?" with the sign for 'man' under his spoken words.

Tim closed his eyes. "Guess that answers that," he muttered. Damian promptly poked him. Tim shook his head rather than repeat the useless observation. Damian poked him again, harder. Tim sighed, opening his eyes again. "It's nothing, Damian."

"It is not," the teen countered. "It is just . . . pieces. It is just pieces that do not fit. I remember the bats," Damian spoke in a rush, signing faster than he could vocalize his thoughts. "I remember the cape. Too heavy, but that changed. I remember the quiet engine, and I remember the fire, and I remember the light. The light was big—important. It . . . it called—"

"Slow down," Tim signed the 'slow' firmly with his hand over Damian's rather than his own to still the wild out-of-order signs. "The signal," he provided after a moment, because that wasn't one of Damian's words and the context was skewed anyway. Gotham to English, English to ASL, ASL to Damian. Sometimes it just came down to charades no matter how simple the concept.

Gotham's vigilante clan was anything but simple. "The Bat Signal calls Batman—and his allies—for help. It is on the precinct roof." It sounded like Damian had pieces of both Dick and Bruce's respective runs, but it was something to work with at least. "Bruce Wayne is Batman."

Damian nodded slowly, pulling his hands free. "That fits," the teenager admitted.

"We need Batman to protect you," Tim explained carefully. "For now," and Tim wasn't Superboy, but he could almost hear Damian's heart rate speed up. "Just for now," he repeated, and Damian did not ask the obvious questions. Tim had warned him once that some things can't be unknown twice, and Damian seemed to take that to heart over the years.

Damian carefully folded the crumpled schematic in his lap. "Wayne Manor?" he asked, levelly, putting the plans aside. "It has a library."

"Even bigger than the one at your school," Tim promised, as Damian shifted. It took a few moments for Damian to settle back against Tim's shoulder, but facing away from his older brother. Tim couldn't help but find symbolism in Damian placing his guardian at his back. "You will like it," Tim signed, reaching around Damian in what was _not_ a hug.

It's another long moment before Damian made his decision: "Okay."

* * *

"So here is how this works," Tim announced, sliding out of the backseat upon reaching the manor. It had been an awkwardly silent car ride across the city. Tim and Damian had worked out on paper their 'demands' such as they were, while Bruce tried to eavesdrop via the rearview mirror and paid inadequate attention to the road. "If Damian asks a question, he gets an answer. No question. No answer. It's really very simple."

Bruce nodded slowly, countering with: "He'll need a chaperone outside, and absolutely no leaving the grounds."

"I stay fully informed," Tim returned, because he agreed with Bruce's condition. "No secrets, Bruce, and if Jason tries anything, I handle it." He hadn't explained that particular addition on the list to Damian, but it had been included to keep the younger boy wary of the Red Hood as Tim didn't expect Bruce to concede on this point.

"Jason is on our side for now," Bruce argued as predicted, plucking the list from Tim's grasp and taking Damian's bag automatically to the teenager's annoyance. "This will be faster," he excused himself, already skimming the document with narrowed eyes. Tim had taken great therapeutic delight in scribbling out anything not intended for Bruce's eyes to the point where not even the world's greatest detective could deduce the original text. "Communication shouldn't be too difficult," he commented.

Tim and Damian shared a skeptical look behind Bruce's back as the larger man advanced on the manor. Comprehension and understanding were two very different things. Tim had the added bonus of familiarity with Bruce's lack of general communication skills.

"Dick and Stephanie can sign," Bruce continued unaware, "and they've been teaching Alfred. The others . . . could use some lessons and a little patience."

"Steph can sign?" Tim asked, fighting a smile.

"She took a class in college. Insisted."

"That sounds like Steph." Tim handed off his bag to Damian, and tapped the list. "But I'd just like to reiterate this last point—the first person to try sneaking up on Damian deserves what they get."

Bruce opened his mouth, but whatever he intended to say was silenced by the opening of the door and Alfred's knowing look.

"Master Timothy," the butler greeted them. "It is good to see you again . . . and young Master Damian." Alfred raised his hands. "Hello, my name is Alfred."

The older man's signs were precise if disjointed, and Tim grinned knowingly. "Let the grammar go, Alfred," he advised, fully aware that he was inviting comparisons to pots and kettles.

The first tutor that Tim had hired for Damian and himself despaired of Tim ever gaining fluency with his careful adherence to the rules of spoken English. The arguments between the ASL tutor and Damian's original speech therapist were some of the most amusing that Tim had ever seen and the former vigilante had once lived in Titans Tower. He had kept both of them on longer than he should have for sheer entertainment value.

It was worth the bonding experience with Damian that resulted, and no one ever had to know why the Drake boys' personal sign for their culture clash was signing 'woman' with both hands on either side of the face simultaneously.

_Tim and grammar? Pfft._

"An endeavor your predecessors have been attempting for many years, Master Timothy," Alfred smiled, nodding his appreciation as Tim took over translating for Damian. The teen could read lips easily, but it was the spirit of the thing. "They have been temporarily corralled in the Cave. Where would you prefer to reunite?"

"The Cave," Damian answered immediately.

"No," Tim disagreed. "You have the attention span of a goldfish when cars are involved. You can explore the Bat Cave later, but I want your focus on our hosts." He smiled weakly at the butler. "You can set them free, Alfred. It's okay."

"Very well, Master Timothy. Excuse me, while I let loose the hounds."

"This way," Bruce indicated, leading them into the kitchen. "You're probably hungry," he threw over his shoulder, twisting to sign as he backed into the kitchen. "Alfred made sandwiches."

Damian was always hungry these days; Tim was too on edge to eat right now, but he wasn't given a chance to refuse. A hand plucked the proffered sandwich off the plate and stuffed it in his mouth as a familiar weight settled across his back.

"You're too thin, Timmy," Dick lamented in his ear. "Both of you are altogether too scrawny."

"Grayson!" Damian squawked behind them.

Tim swallowed, and shrugged off Dick to wheel around. "How do you know . . ." Tim hesitated. Know? Remember? Why on earth would Damian have stayed with Tim if he had another option?

"He volunteers at my school," Damian explained, hunching his shoulders furtively as he tried not to stare at both of them in turn. "Why is he _here?_" Damian gestured insistently.

"He does _what?_" Tim demanded wheeling around again.

"I live here," Dick answered Damian, and then turned to Tim, "and I volunteer as a tutor with the afterschool program."

Tim punched Dick before he could reconsider.

He might have gone further, might have taken out all of his stress on Dick if Damian hadn't gotten between them, grabbing at Tim's arms and hanging on stubbornly as Tim yelled over Bruce. "Are you insane? Do you have any idea what could have happened? The risk you were taking?!" And even at Bruce: "Did you know about this?"

"No," Dick answered, stemming the blood flow with his shirt sleeve. His nose didn't look broken, Tim considered as he tried to reign in his temper. "It's all on me, Tim."

"You could have led any of the rogues right to us," Tim uttered, fingers scrabbling for purchase on Damian's shoulders through the over-sized hoodie. "After everything I did to hide us in plain sight, you risked _everything_, Dick . . . and for what?"

There was a low whistle from the doorway that diverted everyone's attention, but Damian's. Jason Todd lounged against the frame. "Tell us how you really feel, Pretender?"


	2. Chapter 2

There was a long moment where Bruce thought Tim might go after Jason too . . . and maybe he would have if Damian wasn't attached to his person like a particularly stubborn burr. The situation could still rapidly devolve, however, if the Red Hood continued speaking, so when Jason opened his mouth a second time, Bruce cut him off. "Be quiet Jason."

The man shrugged and moved to offer Dick a hand up.

Damian had cautiously released Tim, and then set his back deliberately to Dick and Jason as he signed rapidly. Bruce could make out some of it from his angle, and to Tim's credit, he was refusing Damian's promises to leave, to ignore Dick, to get the man fired with a sharp swing inward of his right hand. More executioner than employer, Bruce considered, although that last sign got a snort out of Tim.

"That's not how volunteering works," Tim told Damian fondly. He's speaking now, not just signing, so the situation already looks a little calmer. "And no, it will be okay. I will make it okay. Don't worry about it." Tim turned to meet Bruce's gaze squarely. "Let's try that again," he offered with the depreciating smile that always seemed to earn Tim forgiveness and goodwill. "Perhaps with the girls this time?"

"I think I should be offended, Boy Wonder," Stephanie drawled as she entered the kitchen with Carrie at her heels. "But since we're role models and all . . . I could settle for a hug."

Tim accepted that offer warily, and Steph dragged Carrie closer as she turned to include Damian. "Hi, my name is Steph," she informed the teen brightly, fingerspelling the first syllable of her name with ease. "And this is Carrie."

Damian studied them both for a long moment, before returning the introduction. "My name is Damian," and the name sign he used was unfamiliar to Bruce. It didn't use the letter 'D' at all, but his right fist was poised momentarily over the left hand (which was open facedown) before it came down firmly.* "This is my brother, Tim."

And Bruce thought Damian would never share such a sentiment.

"Nice to meet you," Stephanie grinned bemusedly. She reached out and then hesitated, speaking suddenly to cover the motion. "I bet the boys didn't introduce themselves before jumping straight into the fighting." This time she actually let herself touch, wrapping an arm around the teenager as she turned him back towards the others, signing carefully. "His name is Dick. He's the oldest and second-in-command. And this is—"

"My name's Jay," Jason cut her off, signing his initial close to his heart. He shrugged. "Jason. Jaybird. Jay." Damian was nodding cautiously, but the rest of the room was distinctly incredulous; it made Jason smirk. "What? The bad Robin can't know things?" he teased, reaching over the kitchen island to poke Tim.

"Most impressive," Tim returned. "You've learned to introduce yourself without committing homicide. It only took a decade or so."

Jason's eyes narrowed and that possible fight loomed again in Bruce's mind. Then Damian took a significant side step that freed him of Stephanie's grasp and placed him directly in front of Tim. Bruce still had a good view of Damian's hands, and the assertion of the fourteen year old's ability to 'break' Jason was casual, but firm. It made Jason snort, evaporating the tension in the room.

"You can 'break' me?" Jason continued to laugh, signing the word hard with tight fists. Damian frowned, mouthing the word to himself in confusion, but glanced up to catch Jason's spoken words again. "Kid, every person in this room could hand you your ass on a platter including the runty redhead."

Damian glanced around the room, assessing each person, before turning back to Jason and making a hook motion with both of his thumbs.

_Try it._

And now it was time to divide and conquer, Bruce decided with a growl, moving around the island to separate all of the boys as much a single man could. "No one is trying anything. No one is fighting anyone. Not in the kitchen."

"Of course not," Stephanie whispered under her breath. "The kitchen is Alfred's sacred ground."

"Precisely, Mistress Stephanie," the butler announced, making the blonde jump and Damian whip around to figure out what he had missed. "Besides, I was under the impression that a council of war was to be had . . . Master Bruce?"

Bruce nodded tightly, keeping a wary eye on Tim. He had expected things with Jason to be tense, but Dick's curveball had left them precariously out of balance. "Let's reconvene downstairs."

"Damian has homework to do and the entirety of Tolkien to read," Tim commented mildly. Bruce expected a protest from Damian, but it didn't come. "Perhaps Robin could show him to the library?" the young man suggested with a polite nod to Carrie.

"Acceptable," Bruce agreed. "Stephanie can go with them as . . ." Many years of parenting kept Bruce from letting the dangerous 'babysitter' designation slip, but his oldest children were clearly filling in the blank from their own experiences. ". . . a translator."

"I want Stephanie in on the debrief," Tim responded sharply. The potential threat of bloodshed between his three oldest sons hung in the air, and Bruce conceded generously. "Dick then."

"I do not need a translator," Damian countered promptly, eying Dick with suspicion.

"Carrie doesn't know ASL," Bruce reminded the teenager.

"I _speak_," Damian reminded him, enunciating carefully. "And lip-read. If all else fails, writing is not a lost art."

The teenager promptly turned and walked out the kitchen door, pausing only long enough to hold it for Carrie. With the newest Robin at his side, Bruce's son disappeared into the Manor as confidently as an eight year old boy had once assumed his place within. It gave Bruce some hope that this might work out after all.

* * *

The library was as big as Tim had promised. The shelf devoted to Tolkien's fiction was considerable. It would take much longer to finish than J. K. Rowling's series . . . even if Damian was not predictably distracted by the change to his schedule, sudden inclusion to the secret world of Gotham vigilantes, and the promise of large modified vehicles on the premises.

He gave a sideways glance of appraisal to the tiny bespectacled redhead beside him. She was a few years younger, but clearly identifiable as the red-headed Robin of the papers. He wondered if she could be persuaded to sneak him into the Batcave so he could examine the cars. It's not as if anyone can accuse him of eavesdropping.

"Dick said that you talk," Carrie gave him a sideways glance of her own, only turning to him properly about halfway through the sentence, but process of elimination had given Damian the first piece. "Bruce and Steph said . . . people don't. And . . . not fair to make you speak . . . the time."

Damian pressed his fingertips against his temples; perhaps he had been a little hasty in proclaiming his capability. Everyone was different—the way they spoke, how they enunciated different words, the way that accents inevitably altered pronunciation. It took time to learn people well enough for easy communication. He could get the gist, Damian decided and scowled as the sentence came together in his mind.

"If I do not wish to speak, no power on earth could force me."

"So why . . . at all?"

Damian frowned, thinking of the early speech lessons and the sore throats that came with wordless rage before that. He remembered the arguments between his first speech therapist and ASL tutor. He also remembered the way that they both freely criticized Tim.

He had argued that he could understand Tim perfectly well once upon a time, having woken up with lip-reading skill intact. Damian thought that he could make himself understood without the necessity of learning sign or speech, even with his dismal penmanship at the time. He had a few signs that Tim had taught himself from books and online resources, and the pair of women that visited him daily for lessons stretched the very limits of Damian's patience. One didn't have to hear or read the words they used to understand their body language . . . or Tim's.

His brother said that was as good a reason as any why Damian should study both ASL and spoken English. Damian didn't need to sign, and he didn't need to speak, but if he could . . . well, to Timothy Drake, there was no such thing as useless knowledge. If Damian could use both methods of communication and chose one or the other, that was fine with Tim. His brother simply wanted Damian to have every option available to him.

"I speak because it benefits me to do so," Damian decided. "This is also the reason that I choose to sign."

Carrie adjusted her glasses, studying him closely, and Damian waited patiently for her to make up her mind. It didn't take long.

"I can fingerspell my name." She promptly demonstrated, stumbling over the repeated letter, but continued undaunted. "And Steph's. Cass. Alfred. Dick. I've pretty . . . whole alphabet . . . _Q_ . . . stupid letter."

Damian sighed, but corrected her sign. "_Q_ does not resemble its reproduced form and is not part of a sequence like _G_ and _H_ or _M_ and _N_. Fortunately, you are unlikely to need the letter _Q_ with any kind of frequency."

So much for making any headway with Tolkien.

* * *

The Cave seemed unchanged. There were a few trophies that Tim didn't recognize and the computers had clearly been upgraded, but it seemed that the Cave itself remained as timeless as ever.

Of course a new glass case held yet another retired Robin-suit.

The costume looked smaller somehow without a pint-sized assassin in it, or perhaps just in comparison to the height that Damian had gained in the last three years. Tim had less than a head of height on his younger brother now, and looking at the child-sized costume was unsettling. The hood is up—a 'safety measure' that Damian still used when the world wasn't fair—which was likely Dick's influence over Bruce's. The boots were double-knotted the way Damian preferred them and the cape was utterly still . . .

Still, Tim reminded himself, the cape was still. It was not fluttering uselessly beyond Tim's reach.

_. . . He'd missed, and it was too late to correct. He'd missed and the bright yellow of Robin's cape was quickly swallowed up by the smoke, because the whole structure was coming down . . ._

"Tim."

Tim moved automatically toward the computer banks at Dick's voice. "I should point out," he managed to find his voice again, "that Ra's has waltzed into the Manor and even the Cave unimpeded on multiple occasions."

"Security is improved accordingly on each occasion, and Ra's al Ghul has never confronted all of us in this place," Bruce reassured them confidently. "Separate we would be his prey as we have been before, but together . . ."

"Yes, Ra's enjoys the fables too," Tim acknowledged shortly, "but he has been known to change the game, Bruce." Tim gestured to his left where Jason has found himself a seat. "When Ra's determines that Jason has betrayed him, will he send ninja? His precious trusted few? Or will he make the bounty on Damian's head public?"

Steph grimaced. "Hopefully not the last . . . let's not repeat that dance. I may have said some unflattering things to a few of the assassins that Leviathan sent last time. May have rearranged a couple faces too, and . . . well, I know Damian wasn't technically allowed a sword, but it seemed to make him happy. He loved his sharp and pointy weapons so . . ."

"Batgirl."

Steph saluted cheerfully. "Got it, Boss."

"Boss?" Tim mouthed behind Bruce's back. The Batgirl title almost never fell under Batman's jurisdiction. Three powerful women had each made a point of standing on their own two feet when wearing the Bat across their chest.

Steph grinned back at him, and drew two fingers down her hand in the pattern of Nightwing's fingerstripes. Now, that was a surprise. Tim brought his index finger from chin to chest, and Steph waved him off with a smile, shaking her _L_-sign loosely to the side.*

"If the two of you are quite finished?"

Stephanie straightened instantly. Tim waited a good twenty seconds before shifting back into business mode just to watch his mentor twitch. "Bruce has a point," he acknowledged graciously to Steph and Dick. "We're on a deadline. Ra's will be knocking on our door imminently and the police will want to charge the Red Hood with murder any time now."

Jason spun his seat back and forth effortlessly with the toe of one boot as if completely unbothered with being ignored, before responding nonchalantly: "That would be pretty difficult, considering the Joker isn't dead."

The entire Cave went quiet.

Tim exhaled slowly: "Well, that was unexpected."

Jason shot him a pained look. "Some of us don't want the Bastard to keep us from coming home, Pretender. You know, again?"

Tim raised an eyebrow. Stephanie choked on whatever comment she had intended to add, and Dick turned to Bruce. "You knew."

"I suspected. I couldn't be sure, and my tests were . . . conclusive." Bruce settled more fully in his seat, pinning his attention on the second son. "How did you pull it off?"

"Well, there are perks to being on the Batman Inc. payroll," Jason began dryly, and that was news to Tim. Bruce must have really believed in the Red Hood's turn around. "And there are perks to being on good terms with Babs," and the dig at Dick would be another reason that Tim didn't believe a word of it.

"Jason."

The taller man rolled his eyes and continued. "I used my access to the labs to run the usual DNA tests on an anonymous cadaver from the other side of the state line. Oracle switched the results with anything in the Joker's file from Arkham and in the Batman Inc. databases," he tilted his head in what might have been deference to their mentor. "That bought me some time after the demolition and drive-by maneuvers of last night."

"You put a bullet in Detective Bullock's arm."

"Better than his head," Jason shrugged. "I didn't want them to get a good look at me while I was dumping a body on the precinct steps. Sue me."

"The explosion?" Steph asked curiously.

"I own the building. No one was inside although it will take a day or two for the crews to confirm it." Jason grinned toothily. "It was a big building. Anyway, even with priority status, the Gotham PD will take a day or two to verify the identity against the Joker's new records. Longer to figure out the switch and fix it."

"It'll take even longer once Ra's breaks in to steal the corpse for his own purposes," Tim pointed out, "although Ra's will have you figured out shortly thereafter and no longer need the test results by then."

Dick frowned. "Why would Ra's . . . ?"

"Side effect of sabotaging the Demon's Head from the inside out," Tim admitted. "Ra's doesn't trust anything nowadays . . . especially not an errant agent of the Bat."

"Well, whose fault is that, Pretender," Jason grumbled, and Tim flinched. Red Robin had done a lot of things that year that he wasn't proud of. Best of intentions seldom get a vigilante anywhere in this world. That did not mean that Tim would sit here and be taken to task for the four-year-old offenses of his adolescence.

"Perhaps you would like to share the details of how exactly you broke the Joker out of prison," Tim suggested archly. "And what you did with him since you seem to have gone to a lot of trouble to avoid killing the man who once blew you up."

Jason straightened in his chair, fixing Tim with a cold look that reminded the younger man that Jason had never been the "dumb Robin" some had claimed. He played Chess, not to win, but to _never lose_. The Red Hood could keep even Alfred on a single game for hours upon end as he refused to sacrifice even one of his pieces in the dance around the board.

"I don't care if you've been out of the game, Replacement," Jason began almost civilly. "I don't care that you're out of shape and gone soft playing "Daddy Warbats" with the demon brat. I don't care, because you're asking to be beat down. And if you keep asking, I'm going to give it to you. Do we have an understanding?"

Tim gave a bland board room smile. "Certainly."

Jason continued to eye him warily until Dick cleared his throat. "What did you do with the Joker, Jason? How do you know he won't pop up and ruin your plan?"

"That was the hard part," Jason acknowledged shortly. "I had to call in a couple of favors. The Joker's alive and in lockdown. I can't guarantee that he'll stay that way indefinitely, so if you want a countdown, there's the real risk, B. Can you solve the case before my associates get bored?"

He didn't know about Batman, but the superhero that Tim once was would take that as a challenge.

* * *

Plans and logistics ended up taking a considerable chunk of the day. Eventually, Alfred demanded dinner upstairs, and after the awkwardly quiet meal people begin to go their separate ways. Bruce and Carrie left to suit up for patrol with Dick on their heels as Cave Support for the night. Jason had promptly disappeared as soon as his plate had been cleared, and Stephanie insisted on doing the dishes for Alfred so that Damian could get his tour of the Cave (and the cars) from the man that knew them best.

The butler was perfectly capable of protecting Damian, but Tim found himself trailing the pair down to the Cave anyway although he stayed to the upper levels. He watched Damian's progress over the railing, but once Damian successfully earned permission to examine under the hood, Tim returned to the main computer bank.

Dick smiled cautiously. "You're welcome to join me, Timmy."

Tim took the proffered chair. "I'm still angry with you."

"Fair enough," Dick allowed. "I'm still not sorry."

Tim tensed.

Dick altered a camera's perspective, keyed a passcode, and swiveled back to face Tim. "I knew it was a bad idea, Tim, but you don't know how awful things got around here afterwards. Bruce and Jason were drowning again. Steph stopped coming around, and I had . . . really bad nightmares for a while. By the time you enrolled Damian in school a year later, it was too much of a temptation."

Tim didn't comment.

Dick dragged a hand down his face. "So I made up a ton of ridiculous rules to follow, and started volunteering at every school your side of the city. I was only in Damian's school Tuesday afternoons, and I didn't even meet him until halfway through October. Then I had to wait for someone else to introduce us and that was conditional on the explicit mention he was Deaf." Dick smiled ruefully. "That took a lot longer than you'd think. I finally got to introduce myself around Christmas, and if I didn't know ASL, I don't think Damian would even know my name. I don't tutor him, Tim, and I still volunteer in all six schools." Dick shrugged. "I say hello once a week, flirt with his guidance counselor, and occasionally offer unsolicited opinions on the books he's reading. It annoys him that I watch the movies first."

Tim swallowed, because a lot of his early Robin adventures ended with bad movies and candy contraband on Dick's couch. However, he wasn't going to let Dick get away with this by succumbing to sentiment. "That's because Damian has taste, Dick. It's an appalling habit." Tim stood up. "And it was a stupid risk."

"I knew that." Dick changed a sequence of controls absently, and then cautiously glanced up at Tim. "He didn't recognize me. I knew that too, but . . . I hoped. He didn't recognize me."

Tim shrugged. "He didn't recognize anyone." Tim crossed the walkway and hopped up onto the rail, leaning over it and calling below: "Alfred, could you get Damian for me?"

When his brother poked his head out from under the flying Batmobile, Tim crooked a finger and Damian obeyed promptly with a polite word to Alfred. Tim had trained him well. "It's been a long day," he signed as he spoke since Damian was still climbing the stairs, "I'm going to bed. Did Carrie show you where your room is?"

Damian shook his head. "I'll follow you."

It was a long walk upstairs and Tim took the time to give Damian a brief outline of the day's events. He left it simple, because Damian didn't have the perspective to comment or improve upon the plans made. He left out Jason's chess game with Ra's because those were details that Damian didn't need to relearn. After some thought, Tim told him to ease up on Dick.

Damian shook his head irritably, and Tim didn't feel bad about it.

Then they were at Damian's old room, and it was as generic now as it had been before. Damian's few precious possessions had been kept hidden away and then claimed by what few friends the young vigilante had. Dick wanted the sketchbooks, and Steph kept a sword that Tim didn't know the story behind. Kara had claimed a ridiculous looking fedora, Bruce had insisted on Colin taking Damian's bike, and Tim kept Damian's mp3 player—used it too for his morning jog and the occasional business trip.

There was nothing in here that could give away who Damian had once been, and that was mostly the doing of a paranoid eleven year old.

Damian walked right in and flopped onto the mattress beside his duffle. A moment later, Damian remembered to toe off his shoes as he twisted around to look at Tim. "I think this bed is bigger than my bedroom."

"Distinctly possible," Tim returned, still hovering in the doorway of the room that had once been Damian's bedroom. "I'm . . . um, three doors down. On the right. Keep the windows closed, and don't wander off. There's a bathroom through there, so you should be set."

Damian made a dismissive gesture. "I know."

"You don't have to sleep in here if you don't want to," Tim said suddenly, struck by the irrational fear that simply being in the Manor would shake everything loose—the nightmares, the memories, the words. "You can stay with me."

The look Damian fixed him with was appropriately scathing for a teenage boy, and Tim sighed. "I am fourteen years old," Damian announced with dignity. "I will be fine."

"I know," Tim signed, tapping his temple with a little extra force, letting his face convey the rueful meaning. "But if you need me . . ." Tim shrugged. "You know where to find me."

"I know," Damian repeated, and the teenager wasn't . . . well, he was scared. A person would have to be stupid not to be in the house of Batman with, and Damian wasn't stupid. But the teenager wasn't freaking out or demanding answers either. He was letting Tim handle it . . . again and again. So Tim had to let his brother handle this.


End file.
